Collider.com’s Steve Weintraub (a.k.a. “Frosty”) says he’s spent the last few days researching a story about The Invasion (Warner Bros., 8.17), the Nicole Kidman zombie film that Oliver Hirschbiegel began to direct (but wasn’t allowed to quite finish), and discovered it’s much more of a Wachowski Brothers job than anything else.

The Wachowskis re-wrote 2/3 of it, Weintraub reports, and then arranged for addi- tional footage to be directed by James Teigue, the Wachowski flunky who directed V for Vendetta.

“The last time you may have heard of this film was when Kidman was involved with a stunt gone wrong,” Weintraub begins. “What you may not have known was that the stunt took place during the reshoots for the film.”

“Apparently, Warner Bros. saw an early rough cut of The Invasion and realized it needed a little work. The director, Oliver Hirschbiegel (Downfall), was said to be ‘unavailable’ to work on the planned reshoots” — i.e., was most likely given the heave-ho — “so Warner Bros. and Joel Silver brought in a pair of writer-directors that they knew they could rely upon — the Wachowski Brothers.

“It was reported that the boys came in to shoot a new ending. But I can report that they rewrote over 2/3 of the film, and brought in Mcteigue to direct the material while they were busy prepping their own film.

“Silver and Warner Bros. knew that they were capable of creating a more commercially accessible and large scale film than had previously been put together. Apparently, the earlier cut may have been a little artsy, talky, and not exactly a summer tentpole.

“So, we all knew we were getting a new Wachowski film with the upcoming G-rated Speed Racer in 2008, but now we’re getting something to hold our appetites in the meantime. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited as fuck about this and I hope there’s a trailer soon. Hint. Hint. And if you’re curious what this film is about, luckily earlier this year, Warner Bros. provided me with a thorough and complete synopsis of said film:

The 2nd annual “Green Issue” of Vanity Fair has “an exclusive transcript” from 11th Hour, a new wake-up-to-global-warming doc that Leonardo DiCaprio produced, narrated and co-wrote. (The IMDB provides no release date other than 2007.) This is worth checking out for the video reel of a photo session with Knut (i.e., the little polar bear who was rejected by his mother, and whom some guys actually said should be killed because of that) plus outtakes from the DiCaprio photo shoot in Iceland.

Spider-Man 3 (Columbia, 5.4) will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival on 4.30 — terrific. File this one under “financially advantageous for Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal‘s festival but a crass mercenary move that further undercuts the spirit of this once-vibrant event, which was already hurt by last week’s announcement about the ticket prices being jacked from $12 to $18 bucks each.”

A festival needs to show big-star, high-profile flicks to help promote itself, but shouldn’t the ones that get selected at least aspire to some kind of quality-type, serious-moviegoer pedigree? Does anyone believe that a story about Peter Parker (Tobey Maguire) giving in to hate and grappling with his dark side (i.e., a rehash of a film I saw in the summer of ’83 or thereabouts….what could that be?) is going to result in echoes that anyone will give a damn about three minutes after they leave the theatre?

The sixth annual Tribeca Film Festival will run from 4.25 through 5.6.

“The floors were sticky. The seats were worn down to the springs. The smell was a combination of buttered popcorn and bodily fluids. In the back row, someone might be in a heated argument with a fellow patron — or getting a $5 hand job. Sometimes, a rat would scurry past your leg. Onscreen, any number of sordid acts, seedy pleasures or splatterrific gore played to a crowd that expected extremities at every turn.” — Time Out‘s David Fear on the 42nd Street grindhouses that are no more.

Speaking of which, a rat (or a very sizable mouse) crawled up my leg once — at a private screening room on Sixth and 54th or 55th, when I was watching John Badham‘s Dracula, which means it happened…good God, 28 years ago. I felt a slight flutter sensation on my lower left pants leg, and then the sensation of sharp little claws heading north. I spat out some vulgarity and flinched and stiffened my leg and swatted whatever it was that was crawling inside. The mouse-rat fell onto my shoe, dead or stunned. I grabbed him by the tail and threw him against the curtained wall. I was furious, but I managed to joke about it later on with the publicist.

Sad, terrible, traumatic news: director Bob Clark (A Christmas Story, Porky’s) and his son Arieldied early this morning on the Pacific Coast highway when a foolish, inebriated 24 year-old guy, Hector Velazquez-Nava, swerved and slammed into Clark’s Infiniti sedan head-on. Clark, 67, and his 22 year-old son were pronounced dead at the scene.

Nava and his passenger, Lydia Mora, 29, were treated for minor injuries and later released. Nava was reportedly found to be driving under the influence of alcohol and operating a motor vehicle without a driver’s license. (What could cause a young drunk with a woman in his car to swerve madly while driving? Not, I’m guessing, a suicide impulse.) Nava will be booked on suspicion of driving under the influence of alcohol and gross vehicular manslaughter.

I’m saddened and distressed by Clark’s death, but the poor guy is gone and a semblance of honesty is required and here it is: very few directors have offended me as much as he did over the years. Clark always struck me as a coarse and unsubtle man because he always made grossly “commercial” movies — i.e., ones that always aimed low, low, lower than low. His films always managed to convey a certain blue-collar crudeness, and I pretty much hated each and every one of them.

I didn’t even like A Christmas Story. (I always seem to frown when I see a picture of that little blonde kid with the black-rimmed glasses — when I see that kid I think Village of the Damned.) I hated Porky’s and Porky’s 2: The Next Day. I thought Rhinestone was pretty bad, and I found Turk 182 abysmal. (I’ll never forget a line that some New York smart-ass wrote about that film — “Turkey! Made $182 dollars!”) Loose Cannons, From the Hip, Baby Geniuses…forget it.

Clark was nominated for a Worst Director Razzie twice — In ’85 for Rhinestone, and then 20 years later for his direction of SuperBabies: Baby Geniuses 2.

Again, I’m sorry for what happened. What a terrible tragedy. It’s always a little bit dicey to be driving at that hour, which, after all, is when the drunks are usually on their way home. Don’t drink and drive, obviously, but don’t drive when the assholes who do this anyway are out in force.

Disney marketing chief Dennis Rice, a guy renowned for having a contentious attitude towards a certain coterie of journalists and critics who don’t pull punches and whose working mantra is “you have to be nice to my movies and clients or I’m probably not going to be very nice to you,” is taking a new gig as president of worldwide marketing and publicity for Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner‘s United Artists.

The rough going-over that Cruise had gotten from the press since the couch- jumping episode seems to have been a factor in the Rice hire. The appearance, at least, is that Wagner has decided to bring in a tough guy who can shove as well as push and give as well as he gets. (Rice probably has very smooth relations with the majority of journalists and critics — he just has issues with certain parties, and I don’t mean just myself.) Rice started at Disney fifteen years ago, and then left for October Films nine years ago, and then served as marketing prez for Miramax, and then returned to Disney in ’03.

Famous people are going to be poked and badgered from time to time about their sexual tastes and proclivities (i.e., by gay media types if they happen to be gay), but it’s their own damn business and if they want to keep it private they’re damn well entitled and should be left alone. I say this having read on Radar Online that Out magazine’s May issue (on sale 4.17) is raising a rude curtain on Anderson Cooper and Jodie Foster, even if there’s not much of a debate about where these two are at.

Would it be a healthier world all around if no one made the slightest attempt to mask their sexuality because doing so would be needless and pointless? Of course, but if a person decides that his/her career will work out better if they keep their cards to their chest, they should be allowed to play it that way.

This is off-topic, but the same goes for those execs in the film industry who’ve had “asshole interventions” — i.e., family and friends sitting them down and telling them they need to make some behavioral adjustments for the general betterment. (A producer of a film I saw recently allegedly went through one of these about eight or nine years ago.) Would you want to be on the cover of some magazine if you (or your wife/husband) had undergone group therapy along these lines? Would you want it known that your personality problems had become so critical that family and friends had to step in and try and fix things?

This is a good reader-response topic. What persons working in or adjacent to the film industry right now could be evaluated to be most in need of an asshole intervention? I know, I know….I’m a candidate, right? But who else? There must be dozens.

Martin Scorsese will handle three tasks as the Cannes Film Festival next month — giving the festival’s Cinema Lesson, handing out the Camera d’Or for Best First Film and officially launching his World Cinema Foundation, but there’s a fourth task he could be doing, and it would make sense if he did. He could be showing his Rolling Stones/”Bigger Bang” concert tour documentary that he began shooting last October (possibly to be called Shine a LIght), and which Paramount Pictures will release later this year.

Of course, the concert doc (which the IMDB says was shot in a letterbox 2.35 to 1 aspect ratio…cool) may be not ready to show at Cannes, and it might turn up at September’s Toronto Film Festival instead (where Scorsese’s last musical- legend doc, Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, had its big debut). A Hollywood Reporter /Reuters story by Stuart Kemp that ran in early February said that Scorsese “is in post-production, working with a team of editors to assemble the film, which also will feature historical and current behind-the-scenes footage and interviews.”

I’m mentioning this Stones-doc possibility only because I’ve agreed with a 2.16.07 prediction by Toronto Star critic Peter Howell that it would show up on the Croisette, and because I reiterated that feeling in a 3.18.07 HE post, and because a couple of people told me afterwards that Scorsese “almost never shows his films at film festivals” or shows up to tout them.

I called two or three people at Paramount this morning to get an idea of what’s going on and nothing came of it. If it was happening they would have to keep mum anyway until the official 4.19 announcement of the Cannes entries.

It’s 9:37 ayem and Are We Done Yet? (Columbia, opening today) has a zero rating on Rotten Tomatoes. Two critics, however — Reel Times’ Mark Pfeiffer and the Orlando Sentinel’s Roger Moore — have included an olive-branch bend-over comment in their reviews, possibly because they hold with Bipedalist‘s view that it’s important for journo-critics to always try to say something nice in order to keep things mellow and respectful.

Pfeiffer said that “this remake of the 1948 RKO comedy Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House is a moderately amusing family film, if not a terribly inspired one.” And Moore said “it’s amusing to watch Ice play straight-man to McGinley’s perky, needy, too-helpful Chuck.” Bluntly, frankly — the word “amusing” in no way repesents any aspect of Are We Done Yet?

Keith Richards has copped to mixing his dad’s ashes with some cocaine and snorting a line of the stuff back in ’02. “He was cremated and I couldn’t resist grinding him up with a little bit of blow…my dad wouldn’t have cared,” Richards told a reporter for NME, the renowned British music rag. “It went down pretty well, and I’m still alive.”

A denial was issued later on, but many of us will probably choose to ignore it.

NME editors wouldn’t be expected to know this, but cremated-remains snorting is actually a common, age-old practice among Southern Baptists and Pentecostals. I’m told that Pat Robertson once explored the ritual in a special documentary produced for the 700 Club.